ECEI's Re-energized Strategic Plan
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Many people have been vital in re-energizing the ECEI Strategic Plan including this first group that met in October: (front row) Kim Boller, Beth Sullins, Shinyoung Jeon, Sherri Castle, Janice Im, and (back row) Diane Horm, and Jeff Wilkie.
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With prompting from our Advisory Board and a call to double research at OU, the ECEI revisited our Strategic Plan during the 2018-19 academic year. Jeff Wilkie of HoganTaylor facilitated our discussions with key stakeholders including Advisory Board Members, community partners, and OU faculty, staff, and administrators to solicit input. Although based on our previous plan, the new Strategic Plan sets a more ambitious course through 2024 and includes a revised vision and mission, and enhanced scope guiding our research.
Over our first 13 years, much of our research has examined early childhood programming as a potentially powerful intervention to address the impacts of poverty on young children including the income-linked achievement gap documented in children as young as 9 months of age. With our new plan, we extend our aspiration from enhancing quality in early childhood education to promoting equity for young children.
Our updated vision is:
To understand and advance equity in early childhood
.
As an applied research group, our contribution to advancing equity will be enacted through conducting and widely sharing the results of our applied research. Thus,
our revised mission statement is:
To advance and support equity in early childhood by generating and disseminating high-quality meaningful research
.
Our new plan articulates
three strategies
for moving forward:
- Enhance Reputation and Visibility: We plan to continue to attract nationally-recognized research and community partners and to present and publish our findings in top-tier professional venues. However, we intend to increase our dissemination activities to include a wider variety of mechanisms designed to meet the needs of a larger and more diverse and varied audience.
- Increase and Diversify Funding: We plan to continue collaborating with productive partners and using our resources in a prudent way to support our work. However, we plan to expand partnerships, develop new connections, and seek additional foundation, state, and federal funding to strengthen our research group by investing in key positions and people.
- Build Organization Capacity and Capabilities: We plan to recruit and retain a diverse team and support their work through professional development and a strengthened infrastructure. We also plan for continued growth of the ECEI through leadership planning.
As suggested above, we intend to broaden the scope of our research topics. The ECEI will continue to focus on
longitudinal determinants of child equity, early childhood services and quality of care, and the characteristics and wellbeing of the early childhood workforce
. To these three established foci, we will add two lines of research:
- Better understand the intersection between early childhood care and health - Emerging research has shown intriguing associations between education and health but has provided little information about the specific mechanisms that may explain these links. Given our location on a campus with a medical school devoted to addressing the needs of underserved populations, and our available collaborators from social work and allied health disciplines, the ECEI will examine how children’s academic, cognitive, and social-emotional development are linked with indicators of their physical and mental health.
- Research to refine or develop new measurement tools and assessments - relative to measurement development, the ECEI plans to capitalize on our strong experience using and interpreting existing tools along with our experienced and insightful data collectors to highlight gaps in existing child and classroom measures and address these gaps by refining existing or developing new tools. Research in early childhood development and care requires an expanded set of measures to better disentangle the complexities of development, especially for young children under the age of 3.
Our next steps will be to review feedback provided by our Advisory Board during their recent meeting in Tulsa on June 20 and 21. We will also continue work to develop measurable objectives for each of our three strategies along with specific targets, timelines, and metrics.
We are excited about our new vision, mission, and research directions and welcome your input and interest in collaborating with us as we move into our next chapter.
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Annual Advisory Board Meeting
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The ECEI hosted our annual Advisory Board meeting in Tulsa. National and state-level researchers in infant-toddler and early childhood issues once again traveled to Tulsa to provide expert guidance to ECEI staff. This year's meeting was held at the Mayo Hotel and featured discussions about what the ECEI had accomplished in the past year and information about our new Strategic Plan. Our mini-grant recipients also presented information about their research.
The annual Advisory Board Reception and Dinner was held Thursday evening. Several ECEI staff and ECE graduate students presented their research findings. It was a very informative and fun two days! Thanks to all our Board Members and community partners for their continued support of our work.
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2019 Advisory Board members: back from left- Susan Kimmel, Rebecca Fine, Kim Boller, Jim Elicker, Lu Ann Faulkner-Schneider, and Aiyana Henry; and front from left- Iheoma Iruka, Jennifer Hays-Grudo, ECEI Director Diane Horm, Claire Vallotton, and Janice Im
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Advisory Board members, ECEI Staff, and community partners and collaborators enjoyed a poster reception and dinner on June 20 at the Mayo Hotel.
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Regents' Award for Superior Staff
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The ECEI's very own Beth Sullins, Assistant Director of Operations, was this year's recipient of the Regents' Award for Superior Staff. T
his was only the second year for a staff member on the Tulsa campus to receive the award
, which carries a monetary prize and was initiated by the Board of Regents to recognize the outstanding contributions made by OU staff members across all three campuses.
Several OU staff nominated Beth for her significant contributions and job performance of multiple duties and responsibilities at high levels, service, and dedication which has enhanced the mission of OU. During her 10 years with the ECEI, she has demonstrated initiative, positive attitude and perspective, and has routinely gone beyond the expectations of her job to make the ECEI, College of Education, and OU-Tulsa better places. Her work and insights have contributed significantly to the growth and success of the ECEI, and we are proud to have Beth leading our department. We congratulate her for this very deserved Superior Staff Award!
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The splash pad at Hunter Park and 100+ water balloons put the “wet” in our Wet and Wild-themed picnic. Staff gathered on June 7 for an evening of summer fun, and food from Linam Up Grill and Frigid Whips. Leah Smith took home the grand door prize this year. Mother nature provided a wild end to the annual event with a pop-up storm complete with pouring rain!
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The ECEI gives out a quarterly employee recognition award to employees who go "Above and Beyond the Call of Duty" (ABCD). We are happy to announce the recipient for the 2019 first quarter (January-March) was Brittany Brannon.
Here is what the person who nominated Brittany had to say: "Thank you for your steadiness. You consistently produce high quality work and we are lucky to have you.”
Brittany demonstrated the core values of Integrity, Responsibility, Excellence, Respect, Learning, and Flexibility. Congratulations, Brittany!
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Senior Research and Policy Associate Shinyoung Jeon presented at multiple round-table sessions at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference in Toronto this April. Covering a range of topics from
Mapping the Dimensions of Family and Child Care Instability for Infants and Toddlers
to
The Effects of Different Types of Teachers’ Professional Development on Job Satisfaction in Cross-cultural Context: The Role of Self-Efficacy
, Shinyoung engaged in discussions with colleagues from Europe, Asia, and the US.
Diane also attended because she is active in the Early Education & Child Development Special Interest Group (EE/CD SIG) of AERA. During their 2019 meeting, Diane accepted the Early Career Award for Ji Young Choi, former Post Doc at ECEI, who was unable to travel to Toronto due to the impending birth of her son (April 22, 2019). A double-congratulations to Ji Young!
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In April, ECEI Director Diane Horm and Senior Research Associate Sherri Castle attended The Child Care and Early Education Policy Research Consortium (CCEEPRC) in Washington, DC.
Diane presented the "Key Infant Toddler Outcomes and Relationships to Theories of Change" on a panel for
Improving the Accuracy and Feasibility of Infant and Toddler Assessment in Applied Settings.
Sherri presented the "Tulsa Study of Early Education and Development: Patterns of ECE Enrollment and Migration" on the panel for
Contextual and Cultural Variation in Family Decision-Making about Early Care and Education
. She also presented the "Validity Concerns Associated with Multiple Uses of Classroom Observations" on the panel for
Threats to Validity in Quality Measurement: Using Observational Tools in Varied Settings and for Multiple
Purposes
.
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Educare Implementation Study Project Director Shannon Guss and Assistant Project Director Holly Neveu traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska for the annual Educare Learning Network (ELN) Meeting this past April. This meeting brought together funders, researchers from the National Evaluation Partner (Frank Porter Graham Institute), Local Evaluation Partners (LEPs), and administrators of Educares from across the country.
Over the week, attendees discussed and shared data for learning, research that informs practice and policy, information for sustaining high quality programming, and dissemination of research to the wider early childhood field. Shannon and Holly were proud to network with the other LEPs, as well as to be partners and contributors to the ELN.
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Economic Pressure, Parent Positivity, Positive Parenting, and Child Social Competence
Shinyoung Jeon
and Tricia Neppl
Journal of Child and Family Studies
This study examined how economic pressure impacts parental positivity and positive parenting separately for mothers and fathers, as well as how positivity and parenting impact child social competence. The data showed maternal and paternal positivity, defined as a positive perspective on life and the future, and positive parenting including responsiveness, communication, and positive mood were significantly associated with changes in child social competence from ages 2 to 5. While economic pressure was negatively associated with maternal and paternal positivity and father positive parenting, this study suggests that parental positivity and positive parenting could be mechanisms through which financial hardship may affect children’s development.
Collaboration, Innovation, and Time: A Shared Journey Through Child Psychiatric Consultation in the School Setting
Sara Coffey,
Laura Latta,
Heath Mueller, and Sarah Flanders
Psychiatric Services
About 20% of students in U.S. communities have diagnoses of emotional and behavioral disturbances. Even when mental health services are in place, students and teachers often struggle in the classroom. In this column, the authors describe a partnership with a public school system to provide collaborative, innovative support that also offered a novel training opportunity for child and adolescent psychiatry fellows. Over three years of collaborative work, the child psychiatry team (attending child psychiatrist and two child psychiatry fellows) offered direct clinical care and consultation in a school-based clinic. In later years, the team provided ongoing professional development and consultation to teachers, and the model was implemented districtwide. The authors describe challenges of engaging and working in the school setting, which call on key strengths of an effective partnership: communication, respect, and trust. The multiyear partnership offered a mutually beneficial experience for both educators and psychiatry trainees.
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The Intergenerational Transmission of Externalizing Behavior: The Importance of a Positive Romantic Partner
Shinyoung Jeon
and Tricia Neppl
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology
This study evaluated the influence of a positive romantic partner on the intergenerational transmission of externalizing behavior across generations. The study included 213 generation one (G1) mothers and their adolescent children (generation two; G2) who participated from middle adolescence through adulthood. Other participants included G2’s romantic partners in adulthood, and their third-generation (G3) children between ages 3–5. Two steps were used to identify the role of G2’s romantic partner’s positive behavior on the transmission of externalizing behavior from G2 and G3. First, after controlling for G1 harsh parenting and G2 externalizing at Time 1, both G2 externalizing at Time 2 and G2 harsh parenting at Time 3 were associated with G3 externalizing at Time 3. Second, we found both main and interaction effects of G2 partner’s positive behavior with G2 externalizing behavior at Time 2 and G2 harsh parenting at Time 3 on G3 externalizing behavior at Time 3. Results suggest a positive romantic partner may have an important role in disrupting the negative effects of both G2 externalizing behavior and harsh parenting on their G3 child’s externalizing behavior.
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Adapted Teaching Style Rating Scale (ATSRS)
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One of the measures of classroom quality being used at the ECEI is the ATSRS, a rating scale completed by a classroom observer. This measure assesses classroom practices in five areas:
- Classroom structure and management
- Discipline
- Emotional communication and support
- Social awareness and problem-solving
- Preventing misbehavior
The original Teaching Style Rating Scale was issued in 2012 by Celene Domitrovich and the Preschool PATHS program. It has been adapted for use in several other contexts including the Head Start CARES demonstration and the Brain Games observational study. Adapted for Tulsa, this tool is a part of the battery of classroom observations used in the SEED and CAP-Tulsa projects.
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Get to Know Our Advisory Board
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Susan Kimmel, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Early Childhood Professional Development (CECPD)
ECEI Advisory Board member since 2011
Susan is one of our longest-standing board members. In her role as Director of a state-wide organization delivering professional development to the early childhood workforce, she is keenly aware of the needs of childcare professionals in our state. Her insights have proven invaluable in shaping our research agenda.
Here are some of Susan's thoughts on the ECEI and its future:
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What is unique about the ECEI and its research?
There are so many aspects of the ECEI that make it unique – from the team’s dedication to the early childhood field to the comprehensive approach used to ensure excellence in their work. However, what I find most unique is Dr. Horm’s capacity and commitment to generously “grow” new early childhood leaders. Dr. Horm encourages her research team, students, and others to contribute to the field through research, studies, and academics. With her guidance and unfailing support, a new generation of Early Childhood leaders have emerged and are prepared to be the difference in the lives of young children.
What are the biggest changes you have observed during your time on the Advisory Board?
I have had the privilege of sitting on the Board for several years. Throughout those years, the ECEI has grown exponentially. Dr. Horm has created a research team that is second to none, and in doing so, has provided the field with critical information necessary for change to occur. Witnessing the growth and success of the ECEI has been awe-inspiring.
What do you hope to see in the ECEI’s future?
I hope to see continued success and growth for the ECEI!
Thanks Susan! We look forward to our continued collaboration.
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Next Issue: Understanding and Advancing Equity
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Integrity
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Excellence | Respect | Learning | Responsibility
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Flexibility
We are a growing research institute focused on young children (birth to age 8) in early childhood programs. Read more about the history of the ECEI, view our most recent Annual Reports, download a copy of our Strategic Plan, or learn more about our staff.
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We are improving the way that we connect with our colleagues.
Please add ecei@ou.edu to your address book to ensure you receive our messages.
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Issue: Summer 2019
updated: 6/27/2019
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